Floating The Little Missouri

[Grizzly Gabe]

I am heading down to Lake Greeson for a week to jugfish for catfish with some locals that know the lake well. So I've got that covered. What I need some advice on is floating the Little Missouri above the lake. My wive and I have floated most of the float streams in Missouri and we floated the upper Buffalo last spring. We have floated a lot of class 1 and 2 rivers and have been thru a few class 3 rapids. We want to float the stretch from Hwy. 84 down to the lake. We won't be floating from Albert Pike down as I don't think my wife would go for that. We have a 13'3'' Old Town canoe. Anything I should look out like for ledge drops, places where we should portage around or is it not too bad? Any info any one could provide sure would be helpful.

Thanks

[ollie]

Have you floated any of that stream before? If the water is up then you will find many class II-III rapids with large standing waves. I wanted to float it as well, but also I wanted to fish it as well. Ham and I almost pulled the trigger to go, but we decided not to since we wanted to fish as well. In other words if the water is up = white water. When it's down then the fishing will be better, but I don't think you will get both at the same time. When it's down you will have to go over a lot of boulders and slick rocks. If you do do the float just remember there are no local takeouts until the lake and it is pretty much all wilderness so you need to be able to self rescue if you need to. Let me know if you decide to go, I want to hear a report on it! I have always loved that stream and fell in love with it sometime ago.

[Grizzly Gabe]

Ended up not floating the Little Missouri. Went and checked out the river at Hwy. 70 & 84 and up at Albert Pike. Very nice river but it was low and looked like a rock garden. Albert Pike was really beautiful. They are rebuilding some of the campsites there. They are going to be some good tent sites. My wife was not to thrilled about floating this anyway. She is more accustomed to the class I and sometimes II streams we have up in the Missouri Ozarks. She does not like too much white water.

So we ended floating the Caddo River 7 miles from Caddo Gap to Glenwood What a nice river. Didn't fish as this was my 1st time on this river. Wasn't sure how it would be. Ended up not being too bad. 2 or 3 class II rapids.

Lots of shoals on the upper 2/3's of the float. Some long flat stretches toward the end.

Only saw one other canoe all day. A couple passed us with about 2 1/2 miles to go. At the end of the float we saw their canoe swamped in a downed tree about an 1/8th of a mile above the take out. They were walking down to the access empty-handed and soaking wet.

All in all it was a great float. Will possibly do it again next year. Got some pics here:

http://travel.webshots.com/slideshow/577631071QxtWgt

Keith

[rps]

Great report and pictures. Thank you.

[eric1978]

I don't know how you floated that without taking a rod. I'd have been pulling my hair out. Nice looking river.

[Ham]

You should have taken a rod. The Caddo can be GREAT.